Cancer Returns

It has been a while since I updated Cody's blog because, well... you know the saying "no news is good news!" He had been cruising along without problems until September, 2012. In September he started having intermittent non-weight bearing lameness of his left hind leg. It would get better with chiropractic adjustments and laser therapy and then he would stop using the leg again. I took radiographs (x-rays) of his left stifle (knee) and chest in September and didn't see anything of note on the x-rays. I even had the chest films looked at by a radiologist. I did not have the stifle film looked at, which I regret now because it turns out there was a suspicious area present, even in September. Note - if your veterinarian recommends having the radiographs reviewed by a radiologist say yes! They might catch something your general practitioner missed.
In early December I took more x-rays because the problem was becoming more frequent and not resolving with any treatment or after adding on more pain medications.
Well, bummer of all bummers, this set of radiographs showed a suspicious area on his femur AND if that weren't bad enough, his chest x-rays showed nodules that were not there in September. Knowing that those sort of patterns on radiographs usually mean osteosarcoma I dissolved into a sobbing puddle of mush and just hugged my dog like the world was ending. Of course I held out some hope that the problem would be a lesser evil like a fungal infection or less aggressive cancer.

The tumor is the area that looks "moth-eaten" at his distal femur.

Cody had a bone biopsy done on December 11, 2012. The results were chondroblastic osteosarcoma, low grade. It isn't much reassurance that the tumor is "low grade." An osteosarcoma is an aggressive bone cancer and usually by the time we (veterinarians) identify it on radiographs there already is microscopic spread to the lungs. Cody is already showing nodules (small masses) in his lungs. The thing is, in his case, we can't be sure just by the radiographs that the nodules are metastases from his osteosarcoma. They could be recurrence of his previous lung cancer or they could be metastases from his osteosarcoma. Could we biopsy them? Well, it would be difficult and require a CT scan and probably wouldn't really change anything we do at this point.

You can make out small round densities (lighter areas) that are the nodules.